


Standing on Mountain Tops

by serendipitousDescent



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types, Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Age Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, Growing Up, Kid Fic, M/M, No Underage Sex, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7088890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitousDescent/pseuds/serendipitousDescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things hadn't been okay for a long time.</p><p>It was easy to see why. First, he'd died then came back and made a few decisions he wasn't proud of. Then he'd made a lot more decisions he'd never be proud of but had deluded himself into thinking they were the right ones at the time. And after all that, after forcing himself back from the edge and realizing his mistakes, he was ignored by the man he thought of as a father and put in charge of a team of teenagers. A team of teenagers stationed far away from the place he considered home.</p><p>Then he found a toddler in an underground lab on a reconnaissance mission and started to feel like he could move forward for the first time in years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once I was seven years old

**Author's Note:**

> First, nothing physical is going to happen between Tim and Kon until Kon is an adult. This will even be discussed within the fic itself once the time comes. 
> 
> Second, because of the above fact, this fic will be extremely slow burn. As in I currently have about 20 or so chapters vaguely planned out and have not yet reached the point where the romance has started. Uh, yeah. So, beware long waits but lots of stuff happening.
> 
> I think that's pretty much it? I mean, I'm pretty excited about this fic as a whole. Updates will probably (hopefully) come every other week as I'm still writing another long-fic at the same time as this. Also, chapter titles all come from the song "7 Years" by Lukas Graham. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Also, I know approximately nothing about encrypted/decrypted files or hacking or anything like that, so... that part is probably highly inaccurate.)

Anyone would have mistaken the figure on the roof of the apartment building to be one of its residents. Perhaps the husband who lived on the third floor, watching the dimly-lit neighbourhood as he smoked, or the young woman from the fourth floor who often came up to the roof to shout over her phone. And had they not recognized the figure or perhaps the exact opposite, seen a gleam of light against a smooth, distinctively red helmet, they would have continued walking. Even if the neighbourhood had been a bit newer or in a better part of the city, it still wouldn’t have been free of crime. With crime came those sorts and most knew not to call attention to them.

“Hey, uh, Red, we got a problem down here.”

The Red Hood stilled on his perch. “What sort of problem are we talking about here, Cyborg?”

If there was a problem, then it had to be coming from inside the warehouse across the street. His surveillance hadn’t been half-assed; his eyes were currently on the front entrance and the security camera focused on the back entrance was playing on the inside of his helmet. Nobody had entered or left since the Titans went inside nearly forty-five minutes ago. Not unless the building was connected to the old subway station. There was an old tunnel half a block away but nothing to suggest it had been expanded on anytime in the last century. 

Of course, that meant relatively little when it came to things like this. 

“Uh,” came the eloquent response over his comm. 

There were no signs of fighting however, so either the threat wasn’t immediate or they hadn’t engaged yet. The latter was unlikely. The Red Hood hadn’t yet found a situation where they decided to contact him instead of charging towards the nearest potential hostile. 

They were stupid, impulsive kids. It would have been easier to lock them up in a cryogenic chamber than teach them how to properly engage an enemy. And it had been nearly six months since he’d stopped considering that as a possible solution. They relied too heavily on their powers, never took outside circumstances into consideration, among other things. On top of all that, they were the most drama-prone people he’d had the pleasure of meeting and he was including Batman in that assessment. In all of his different masks. Not a week went by without him hearing about who was kissing who or who was about to murder each other or who thought it was a good idea to almost reveal their identities to _entire school of teenagers and teachers alike._

This last year had been one of the most mentally draining years of his life. Well, it was in the top five at least. 

Yet, despite all that, they managed to be some of the most passionate, caring people he knew with only the occasional misstep when it came to personal morals. And those missteps were good, necessary even, because they made them learn. They had to potential not just to be as good as the current Justice League but better. One day, they’d be the best superheroes the world had ever seen.

In the meantime, the Red Hood was having a difficult time believing they’d make it that long.

(Some of them wouldn’t. He’d been lucky with them so far but he could still remember Cassie’s body, limp and lifeless with no way to bring her back. At least, not an ethically approved way that didn’t come with a lifetime of trauma and general bad mental health.)

“Anyone willing to toss me a bone and explain?” he said when the silence lingered.

“Well, there’s… a kid?” Cyborg tried.

“A kid,” he echoed back.

There was a distinctive laugh over the comms, laced with hysteria, as Beast Boy decided to add in his two cents. “What Vi- Cyborg, what _Cyborg_ is trying to say is that we found a kid inside a test tube.”

“Beast Boy-”

“What? It’s true! That is a kid and that is a test tube.”

The Red Hood was on his feet before they could say another word. Rather, start bickering with each other again. If there was really a kid down there then he had to do something about it, regardless of the original mission parameters. 

Not that the original mission parameters mattered. He’d been the one to set them.

“Stay where you are,” he ordered, quickly calculating the distance, “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Five? How can you be here in _five_?” Beast Boy demanded.

“I told you he doesn’t-”

“Wonder Girl.”

“Right, he can hear me, can’t he?” 

The voices were pushed to the back of his mind as he jumped from the roof and adrenaline rushed through his veins like an old friend. His bones became weightless, his breath caught in his throat. Then gravity started to take its course, his fall interrupted as he gripped the fire escape once, twice, three times on his way down. Just enough to keep him from becoming a splatter along the sidewalk. The people in their apartments wouldn’t register it as anything more than a stray cat. A particularly large cat, but a cat nonetheless.

He tapped his wrist against the side of his leg twice as he sprinted across the street, the traffic oblivious to him. There was a thin, metal band attached to his wrist without a single visible feature to it. Just discreet enough to avoid being taken from him in the event he was in a compromising situation. At the same time, a series of purposeful motions would do a variety of different things.

In this case, the Titan’s voices disappeared from his comm entirely as he’d changed the frequency.

“Red Hood, is there something I can do for you today?” Oracle chirped in his ear, as cheerful as ever.

The Red Hood rolled his eyes at her while he slipped in through the front door. According to his last update, the team was two floors down. By which he meant, they were almost certainly three floors down and inside one of the labs he’d specifically told them to leave alone. “You up to your usual Peeping Tom ways?”

“Are you telling me you’re taking a long, hot shower and I should tune in? Because ex or not, that should be too sexy to turn down.”

“Should I take that as a yes?”

“Always, Hood. You’re just not making a compelling enough case for why I should cover your ass while you inevitably fall for some kid’s idea of a prank,” Oracle countered with a note of seriousness before she turned wistful. “We came up with much more compelling scenarios than a kid in a test tube.”

“It could be a bet. I wouldn’t put it past Beast Boy.” The Red Hood paused and considered the elevator. There didn’t seem to be a staircase anything but even creepy labs in basements were suspect to power outages and - there, that section of the wall seemed slightly off. But almost as soon as he noticed it, the panel slid open to reveal the stairs. “You didn’t have to do that, O.”

“I’ll just have to raise my price then. You wouldn’t be too upset about that, Mr. I Carry the Weight of the World on My Shoulders. I’m thinking a massage and the new screen that just came out on the market. You know the one, you were looking at it last night.”

He took the steps down two by two. “You mean the military-grade Sparrow IX that D sent me the schematics for?”

“And a massage.”

“How about I leak you the information here instead? It’s supposed to go straight to the League but - wait a moment, they’ve finally figured out how to ping me on the comm.” Oracle giggled over the line and then the sound cut off as the Red Hood switched the frequency back over. Only to be met with what had to be a dozen different voices, all shouting at him at once. “Shut up,” he barked at them. “Good. Now one of you speak. Just one.”

There was a brief pause and the Red Hood could picture them silently deciding who to speak.

Wonder Girl took the plunge. “We forgot to mention, we’re… not on the second floor of the basement anymore, we’re-”

“Third floor. Second, no, fourth lab on the right. I know. ETA twenty seconds.”

They went blissfully silent as the Red Hood turned on his heel at the sight of the door to the third floor. Just as he’d expected. The door to the fourth lab on the right had been left wide open where the rest of the doors were still sealed shut. Anyone could have heard them shouting at each other a few minutes ago. They’d have to have a talk about proper espionage once they got back to the Tower.

Maybe it would stick this time.

The five of them turned to look at him as he entered the lab. And then he stopped.

They hadn’t been lying when they’d said there was a kid in a test tube.

Only it wasn’t a test tube.

It was easy to see what had led them to believe it was. The tube extended from the floor to the ceiling, filled to the very top with some sort of clear fluid. Chemicals, almost certainly. Because the boy floating in the middle of the tube, small and vulnerable, wouldn’t have been able to survive if that was just a saline solution. And there was life to his cheeks, an occasional twitch of his fingers, eye movement even if his eyes were closed. 

The lab itself was immaculate. It had clearly been built around the chamber in the centre of the room, all of the tables and computers set up so somebody could always been in view of it. The Red Hood slowly looked around the rest of the room. Most of the equipment seemed too immaculate to have been used before, meaning this was probably more of a gallery than their actual working lab.

When he’d sent them in here, he’d thought this was just an underground operation made up of recent ex-employees of S.T.A.R. Labs and LexCorp. Their work would be controversial and the data would be sent to the Justice League, but it would be an everyday run for the Titans. 

That clearly wasn’t the case.

Recent ex-employees didn’t have the time or the resources to create a living, breathing clone. An operation like that required years of work and millions of dollars, neither of which they would have had at their disposal. The Red Hood had done his research properly. This shouldn’t have been possible. But that wasn’t a cryogenic chamber, it was a cloning chamber and that was a clone floating there. He couldn’t say there wasn’t a clone there, no younger than two years old. If it had been artificially matured then that would only bring up more questions because that sort of technology required billions.

“So,” Beast Boy drawled, bringing the Red Hood’s attention back to the five pairs of eyes on him, “what’s the plan, boss-man?”

“We’re bringing him back to the Tower with us.”

Oh. 

Oh no.

Oracle would never let him live this down. She wouldn’t even have to do or say anything about it, not when these stupid, impulsive kids already looked relieved at the decision. All she’d have to do was look at him and this moment would come rushing back. The time he rescued an illegally-made clone from over-funded scientists on a recon mission that he shouldn’t have been present for.

“Is it normal for people on this planet to take in other people’s young?” Starfire asked, floating in front of the chamber as she looked at it in vague interest.

The Red Hood shrugged. The distraction was a welcome one. “Depends.”

“On what exactly? There must be factors you consider while making the decision. I wish to know what they are.”

“Look, Star, I know you just want to understand but it’s complicated,” Wonder Girl pitched in with a hesitant smiled. “We’re not going to leave him here because that’s the right thing to do. But if there were, I don’t know, twenty or thirty of them, then we’d have to get ahold of someone else to find a home for them.”

“Primarily emotional reasons then, but financial concerns are also considered.”

“And we don’t actually know if this kid is the only one. How about you guys finish checking out the rest of the facility? There should be another two floors below this one. I’ve got this handled for the moment,” the Red Hood cut in.

There was a burst of obligatory protest but they all filed out of the room easily enough, looking a bit lighter and eager to move on with their mission. Only Raven lingered and he nodded towards her. She hesitated for a moment but stayed in the room. The Red Hood couldn’t blame her. The noise of her teammate’s thoughts and emotions bothered her sometimes, gave her migraines that would only go away if she managed to hide herself somewhere without anyone around for a few hours. 

Him and an unconscious toddler probably seemed like a better option than the rest of the Titans if one such migraine was about to set in. 

The Red Hood stepped up to the screen closest to the cloning chamber. All he’d managed to do was get the password screen up when it disappeared entirely, revealing a list of files. He scowled and switched his comm back over to Oracle’s frequency.

“Turn on your camera and link me in, and we’ll call this even,” she snapped.

He paused for a moment, taken off guard.

“Red Hood.”

“Of course, your highness.”

He tapped the metal wrist band and a flicker of light along his peripheral vision confirmed the camera was on. Then he stared purposely at the toddler, obliviously floating in his cloning chamber. Best to let Oracle get all of the visual information she needed. Or just confirm her suspicions that the Red Hood was a big enough sap to take an unknown clone in under his wing just because they were small and vulnerable.

It didn’t matter that she was right. Small and vulnerable seemed to draw in most of the Batfamily, right next to a strong sense of the injustice in the world. Both were in play at the moment. At least this was nothing like the wide variety of animals Demonwing had collected over the years.

But he didn’t have the time to do this forever and so he turned his attention back towards the interface after a moment. Taking in an unknown was one thing, doing so without knowing all the information available to him was yet another. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Most of the files on the computer were encrypted, likely just in case of a situation like this one, and thus inaccessible to him. At least until he could gain access to them but that would take time that he didn’t have at the moment.

It helped that all he needed to do was move the files onto a portable information drive, such as his helmet, where he could decrypt them later. And that they hadn’t put more than a couple minor security features on the most recent reports.

A distressed sound came over his comm and he huffed at Oracle’s impatience. “Do you want me to take off the helmet and let you around while I read these files?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself!”

The back portion of the helmet came up first, quickly followed by the piece around his jaw. A couple of improvements needed to be made to the ventilation system, he noted with a frown, the air inside the helmet was much warmer than that of the lab. And there was the usual brief moment of disorientation whenever he took the damn thing off. 

He set it down on the metal table directly in front of the cloning chamber and ran his fingers through his hair. It was a bit longer than he usually kept it; he’d been meaning to get a haircut for a few weeks now but hadn’t yet managed to make the trip to Gotham. It was the only place that wouldn’t question the streak of white in it and the notable lack of roots. 

There wasn’t much in the reports that came as much of a surprise to him, at least in the ones he could access thus far. In fact, he had made most of the deductions simply by standing in the room. The kid was a clone, through and through. There was one mention of parental donors but nothing on who those donors were or their importance. Other than that, they were simply daily reports from the last week, outlining daily tests and a continued stability of the project.

Everything was as expected. If the dates on the files were accurate, along with a general one file per day, than the kid had technically only been conceived two months ago. It fell into line with when the scientists had been let go from their jobs. 

But that only raised those questions on who was funding them.

There had been no problems with their efforts so far, which suggested previous attempts rather than a perfect first success. One report from a couple days before also mentioned educational implants but not what the implants were meant to teach. It could be anything from normal human interaction to how to fight and advanced strategical tactics. But it meant they had a purpose in mind for this kid, something beyond the scientific advancement of cloning. His gut was telling him it wasn’t a good thing.

From what he could see however, there were no foreseeable consequences if he opened up the chamber right here and now.

If everything went right, then it wouldn’t matter what these people had wanted from this kid. He would be able to grow up and live a normal life without continued access to chemicals that accelerated his growth. He’d find a family, go to school, do all the normal, everyday things that every kid should have the chance to do. All the Red Hood needed to do was track down those donors, make sure they knew how to deal with the consequences of donating their DNA to strangers.

There was just one last thing to check. “Raven, can you pick anything up off the kid?”

Raven looked towards the boy suspended in the chamber and nodded. “There’s a faint trace of emotion coming off of him. A dream, I believe. The impressions are faint and unrefined enough to suggest a lack of consciousness.”

“Thanks.”

He pressed the button and the clear chemicals started to drain from the chamber.

* * *

It took him the better part of two hours to convince the Titans to go to their rooms for the night. He’d expected the general enthusiasm. Not quite enough to predict that they’d make their way through a dozen large pizzas while they chattered about the kid asleep on the couch for hours but some of it. Much like how he knew they weren’t actually going to go to sleep anytime soon. He’d just wanted them out of his hair so he could figure out what to do. Specifically in regards to the unconscious toddler curled up beside him.

At the moment, figuring out what to do consisted almost entirely of reading through a few of the reports he’d managed to decrypt. Both the ones from the interface connected to the cloning chamber and from the computer the Titans had found a floor below them.

So far, they’d been interesting.

To say the very least.

They seemed to suggest that one of the donors hadn’t been an average human. Technically the two donors had just been labelled P1 and P2 but there were brief anecdotes on how they worried about the effects of P1’s DNA. They just didn’t make it clear whether P1 was an alien or had powers. He knew which of the two options he preferred. Humans with powers were a bit easier to track down than an alien that might not be on the planet anymore.

On top of that, he’d been right about this little guy not being the first attempt. There had been eight before him; five males and three females with explosive results. Not the good kind. The options seemed to be between actually exploding and lashing out at the scientists. At least three scientists had died through the previous attempts but it was difficult to tell, given a general lack of information about them. 

The more he read, the more his stomach seemed to twist into knots. He reached over and absentmindedly ran a hand through the kid’s short black hair. The entire situation was a bit unbelievable, even by his standards.

“Honey, I’m home!” came an obnoxiously loud voice, overpowering the announcement from the door’s intercom. “Before you ask, the date was awesome. I’m still sorry I had to - is that a kid? Tim, did you get pregnant and then birth a child over the span of an evening? I mean, I know I’ve been preoccupied lately but I think I would have noticed that.”

“Bart.”

There was a streak of motion, empty pizza boxes shifting with the burst of wind. Then Bart stared at him with wide eyes, rocking back and forth only a foot in front of him. “Tim, you have a child. You have an incredibly young child.”

“I noticed,” he said simply. Hold back the upwards turn of his lips was easy, a skill he’d been forced to master when he took on the mantle of Robin. Low-life criminals didn’t need to know you found them amusing and neither did Bart. “Sometimes missions take a turn towards the unexpected. You know that.”

“Are you telling me you actually gave birth to this child? Did I miss a team-up with the Justice League? Please tell me I didn’t miss a team-up with the Justice League - you could have phoned me when something went wrong. Or you know, if something exciting happened. My date wouldn’t have minded too much.”

“There wasn’t any time. One moment the mission was going as expected and the next, well…” Tim glanced at the kid and shrugged helplessly.

“Tim.”

“Yes, Bart?”

Bart lightly placed a hand on Tim’s shoulder and kept it there even at his unimpressed look. “Whose the father?”

Tim reacted in the only reasonable way.

He shifted his weight slightly and then his foot shot out to kick Bart firmly in the gut, knocking him back several him. The kick did nothing to stop Bart from laughing while he picked himself up off the floor.

“It’s a good question. You haven’t denied anything - uh.”

“What now?”

“The kid is looking at me! What do I do? What are you supposed to do when a small child stares at you? I don’t get kids!” Bart hissed.

Huh.

Sometime between Bart entering the Tower and now, the kid had woken up. He looked just like a sleepy toddler was supposed to, relaxed and looking around with bleary eyes. His attention was mostly focused on Bart which wasn’t surprising given the way the speedster was acting. But then he turned his head towards Tim, every inch of him from his chubby cheeks to his inhumanely blue eyes exhibiting confusion. 

Better confusion than panic. He’d been expecting that since Raven mentioned the kid had never been conscious before. Even with the educational implants, they wouldn’t have started on anything too complex. Maybe colours and animals, what the world looked like.

Nothing about what the world felt like or smelled like or sounded like.

Confusion was something Tim could remember from after he’d died. Waking up with only the faintest idea of what consciousness was supposed to be like, the gripping feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be there. Of course, his experience included about ten times the anger problems this kid would hopefully ever had to deal with. He didn’t want this child to know what a bad day really looked like, the sort of day where diving into the middle of a gang war barely took the edge off. Where leaving the Tower was the only course of action he could take. 

With that in mind, Tim set down his tablet and moved, slow and deliberate, onto the floor. “Hi, I’m Tim. Do you know who you are?”

The kid’s eyes widened, sleepiness being replaced by the beginning signs of panic, but he quickly shook his head. 

The implants had to have taught him body language then. But not knowing who he was brought another problem and that bad feeling in Tim’s gut grew stronger.

“Do you have a name?” he tried again.

“Nu-uh.”

There was really only one thing that could mean. Only one reason why those scientists wouldn’t have given him a name and it wasn’t a good one. People got names. Weapons did not. And the kid was starting to figure part of that out, his lower lip trembling.

There was an urge to lock this kid away from anything that could hurt him, that could cause him to look so distressed. But Tim knew how that ended. He’d tried it before with Jason. Back when he’d just gotten out of the Pit.

But the kid hadn’t even really been alive for more than a few hours and he already thought there was something wrong with him. Had probably pieced together that people had names and he didn’t, simply by virtue of being asked if he had one. Tim hated this. He hated the type of person who thought they could get away with doing this to a person, even if they created that person from scratch. Everyone deserved an identity.

Tim took a deep breath, pushing away the anger and frustration. “Do you want a name?”

“What do I have to do to get one?” the kid replied immediately.

“Nothing.”

The kid was looking at him like he didn’t quite believe him. Like there was supposed to be conditions to these things. But Tim was never going to add conditions, not for things like this, never for anything important. 

“Hey, Bart,” and just like that, the speedster was right beside him again, as if he hadn’t been awkwardly standing behind them for the last few minutes. “What do you think about Conner? He looks like a Conner to me.”

“There isn’t a better name, if you ask me. Which I guess you are. The name’s Bart, by the way. It’s nice to meet you, Conner.”

“Hi, Bart,” Conner parroted back. The syllables sat awkwardly in his mouth, but the panic had faded into innocent joy as he beamed up at the two of them.

It was enough to break Tim’s restraint and he leaned forward to pull the kid into his arms. Conner froze, making an odd noise in the back of his throat, and then wrapped his short arms around Tim’s neck, head tucked into his shoulder. Already ahead of the learning curve when it came to human interaction then. Tim was almost proud.

* * *

Sleep was nothing more than a dream that night. Tim knew better than to think it was because of anything other than Conner, even though the toddler had quickly gone back to sleep. He’d been working on decrypting more of the files but the process was slower than he would have liked. There was nearly an unmanageable amount of information in those files. It would take him weeks to decrypt and read it all.

And each thing he learned would be added to the growing pile of condemnation Tim was compiling. It was already a large pile. Large enough that the League wouldn’t be able to prosecute him if these scientists happened to disappear. 

Tim checked the bottom of the pancake and then flipped it over at the sight of a warm brown. There were already two plates full in the oven being kept warm while he cooked but experience had taught him how quickly they’d disappear. Bart would eat an entire plate to himself. Garfield, Donna, and Kory needed the extra calories as well, for all that Donna would pretend not to want any at first. If they all weren’t too distracted by a blundering toddler to eat, that was.

Speaking of - as if Conner had left his mind for more than a couple moments over the last twelve hours - there was a phone call Tim needed to make. And it was now late enough in the morning that he wouldn’t be hung, drawn, and quartered for phoning. He reached for his cell, selecting the number with one hand and held it up to his ear.

Damian answered the phone after a moment, his voice thick with sleep. “Speak. Now.”

Tim held back the witty comment waiting on the tip of his tongue. “Look to your right.” There was a lengthy pause before he heard Damian take a sip of the coffee Alfred had prepared for him. “I have a question. Completely hypothetical. Let’s say I found a kid night-”

_“Timothy, if you’ve taken Dick, I will personally see to the removal of your testicles, regardless of the inane reasons you have deluded yourself into.”_

“Shit. Fu - _frick_ ,” Tim swore, moving the frying pan onto the other element. He turned around, agitated, only to catch Garfield standing in the kitchen doorway. With a quick shrug towards the over, he stepped past out of the kitchen. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t have Dick. I wasn’t even in Gotham last night. No, we’re in uncharted waters over here - _that’s not what I meant_.”

“I hope you intend on explaining the meaning behind those words then,” Damian replied and Tim knew the outcomes of that voice. They began and ended with his head on a pike. 

“We had a mission last night. Simple reconnaissance. Everything went according to plan, up until we found a toddler in a stasis chamber.” Stasis chamber, cloning chamber, the differences were just small enough to claim plausible deniability. Conner being a clone didn’t need to be common knowledge quite yet. “It wasn’t as if we could have just left him there.”

Damian paused briefly. “If that is the case, then I’m failing to understand why you’re contacting me.”

Tim rolled his eyes, slowing as he spotted the living room door. “Liar.”

“Contrary to your belief in me, Timothy, I have little experience with… small children. There are far more experienced people who you should be contacting right now.”

“What are you talking about? You were an older brother to me. But now Dick’s around and you’re closer to him than you ever were to me or Jason. That counts for something.”

At the sound of Tim’s voice, Bart glanced away from Conner who was fiddling around with his tablet. Of course the speedster would be worried about the completely innocent conversation Tim was having with Damian instead of the clone they’d picked up. The suspicion on Bart’s face only lasted a moment though because Conner tugged on his sleeve, attention diverted.

“Exactly.”

“What?”

Damian sighed. The image of him sitting on the side of his bed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose came through as clear as day. “I was your older brother, Timothy. I was not the one to deal with your inane problems or help you through identity crises. That role was left for another.”

“No,” he snapped.

“I know you and Father are not currently on the best terms. However, he was the one who truly raised all of us.”

Tim turned on his heel and quickly continued down the hall. “I’m not the reason why we’re fighting. I wanted - you know what I wanted. And instead, he put me in charge out here and refuses to so much as answer a phone call. He wished me happy birthday over a text message last year.”

The words must have been louder than he expected them to be, he noted absentmindedly, because Vic was normally good at ignoring shouting in the halls. Especially in the morning. Tim attempt to force a smile and bee-lined towards the stairs. If they were going to have this conversation again, then he didn’t want anyone listening in. This wasn’t their business.

“I’m aware,” Damian said, simply.

“Then you have to understand why I can’t be the one to try anymore. None of this is my fault, D. I didn’t choose to die, I didn’t choose to come back as some twisted freak. Why can’t he just see that I’m trying my best?”

He was nearly sprinting up the stairs now. The elevator would have been faster by far but he needed to burn off the excess frustration before today became a bad day. There was no taking off for twenty-four hours to cool off right now. None of his usual coping methods would work. Not when he had a kid to take care of. 

Silence echoed over the line as he stopped to catch his breath. The access to the roof was only half a set of stairs away which meant he had gone up nearly five flights of stairs in less than thirty seconds. It had been too much, too fast but he hadn’t been able to stop.

The story of his life.

“Are you done?”

Tim let out a strangled, breathless laugh and started up the last few stairs at a normal pace. “Probably not.”

“Very well. I have nothing left to say on the matter. You care too much to let anything happen to this boy, Timothy.”

The line closed with a soft beep, leaving nothing left for Tim to do. Nothing except step out onto the roof, his hands tightly clenched around his phone. It took everything he had in that moment not to chuck it over the side of the Tower and only the knowledge that it wouldn’t help stopped him. Or that someone would spot it falling and come up to the roof to find out what was going on.

Damian was supposed to help him.

He’d been helping Tim for years. Not just in the big things, in the obvious things like defending him in front of Batman. But the smaller things as well. Not saying Batman’s name outright because Damian knew he couldn’t handle the personal moniker when things were so precarious between them. Pulling him into a hug after a nightmare, even when he was more than liable to take someone’s eye out. Everything an older brother was supposed to do and then some.

If Tim was being honest with himself, Batman… Bruce had done all of those things as well. The only difference between them was that Damian had continued being an older brother to him after he came back, and Bruce had rejected him outright.

Tim stiffened as small fingers tugged at his hand, glancing downwards. It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that Conner was the one to stare back at him. There was something almost unnatural about how the tension and anger started to drain out of him, his hands loosening out of their rigid hold. Unnatural in that it had been years since he’d last managed to calm himself down so easily. 

He glanced behind him and raised his eyebrows at Bart as the speedster hesitantly lingered by the door. 

Bart raised his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t look at me. The kid wanted to follow you. A pushover like myself wouldn’t dare say no, don’t follow Tim because he could be having the biggest temper tantrum the world’s ever seen. I’m including the time you nearly leveled Gotham in that, by the way.”

“Most people use the term psychotic break rather than temper tantrum,” Tim murmured, only half-joking. 

“Most people don’t understand the concept of coming back from the dead. I, for one, hear it really messes a person up.”

His gaze flickered back down to Conner as he swallowed down a response. Had it just been him and Bart, he would have said it, no matter how self-deprecating it came across. And it would have come across as self-deprecating because it always did when Bart made comments like that.

None of them knew what had actually happened.

It didn’t seem to stop Conner from looking like the world’s most protective guard dog, Tim noted fondly. “Why did you come up here to see me?”

“I dunno,” Conner muttered, stubbornly.

“That’s not what you told me, kid,” Bart spoke up. “Right, I’ll shut up now.”

“You were angry,” came the blunt explanation but then Conner frowned as he continued, uncertain. “You’re not supposed to be alone when you’re angry.”

Tim blinked. “You’re not?”

Conner shook his head firmly, suddenly reassured. “If you’re angry, you find someone in charge and ask them to put you asleep. Then you’re not alone and you’re not angry.”

That… Tim didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with that information. Intellectually, he knew he could pick a meaning and a reasoning for it. Was already considering if the scientists who’d created Conner thought there was a correlation between emotional distress and the failure of their projects. That Conner had wanted to follow after him because Tim being in charge didn’t exempt him from this rule of not being alone while experiencing anger. Just the part of asking someone to put him to sleep.

But that wasn’t the emotional factor to all of this. 

Not the kid who now thought, on some level, that anger was something that needed to be fixed. Tim didn’t like his anger because it was more than it should have been, more toxic than was healthy. But that still wasn’t the same as shutting down emotion entirely.

His fingers were restless with the need to go back to the files and reports he’d taken from the lab, to find out what was in those educational implants. He needed to know who would have access to that kind of technology. And then there’d be no holding back. But right now Tim fought the urge. There were better times and places.

Conner was oblivious to the thoughts going through Tim’s mind as he stared out over the edge of the roof. The horizon was decorated with land and water alike, even as the Tower itself was separated on all sides by the bay. Sun hit glass windows of tall skyscrapers off in the distance, lighting up the city with warmth and brightness, and just beyond the edges of the city were expanses of lush green grass. The water was rippling with a slight breeze, a couple boats off in the distance to break up the otherwise endless sight. With the breeze brought the heavy smell of salt water and a chill to Tim’s cheeks.

This was a first time for Conner. The first time being outside. The first time seeing Tim get angry, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. The first time feeling the sun on his skin. The first time seeing the expanse of the ocean carry on for what felt like forever. 

Tim didn’t want to tear that away, not now.

“Do you want to stay out here for a while?” he asked, softly.

Conner didn’t look away but his hand tightened around Tim’s fingers. Captivated. The kid was captivated by their little slice of the world.

Warmth spread through his chest at the thought, small and precious, and he slowly sat down.

Wide eyes were directed towards him when he slowly pulled his fingers away from Conner’s hand. But then Tim patted his lap and the toddler didn’t hesitate in sitting down with all the enthusiasm he was supposed to have. Silence didn’t last long between them. All it took was a couple minutes before Conner started pointing things out, asking Tim what they were and why they were.

For the first time in hours, Tim was confident that he wasn’t going to screw this up. It became more than just a mantra repeated in the back of his mind or an urge to protect the little kid he’d found. It wasn’t even just a desire to right the wrongs that had been done to Conner. It was Conner himself. Not a clone created in some underground lab but a boy with the potential to love the world and everything in it.


	2. My Mama Told Me

“Rise and shine, Red!” 

Tim glanced towards the door, his fingers still moving across the keyboard, and glared at Bart standing there, both conscious and in a great mood, judging by the obnoxious grin glued to his face. He held a passionate hatred for morning people. There wasn’t even coffee to make up for it. Neither in his mug or in Bart’s hand. 

“You’re awake,” Bart pointed out, needlessly. Not that Tim could blame him. He really didn’t want to be awake right now. “You’re never awake at this time. The sun only just came up and all the kids are still tucked away in their beds - and you’re normally about five minutes away from strangling me by this point.”

“Bart.”

“Yeah?”

His gaze purposely flickered towards his bed as he turned away from his computer. “If you don’t shut up, there won’t be a five minute warning before I strangle you.”

Bart winced at the sight of the small, human-shaped lump in the middle of Tim’s bed. Conner was fast asleep now, spread out on his back with his arms and legs flung out in every direction. It was almost as if he was revelling in having so much room to move around, even while he was sleeping. Tim’s bed wasn’t where he’d started out the night. No, they’d set up a room for Conner just a bit down the hall before putting him to bed.

It seemed that even toddler came with their problems in the business of superheroes. Tim sighed and stood up, frown firmly in place. Conner wouldn’t wake up for another couple hours with any hope, not when he’d only crawled into Tim’s room about an hour ago. “Coffee.”

“Is it a-”

“No,” he denied quickly. But Bart was still staring at him with that suspicious look in his eyes, the one that always seemed to know when Tim was bullshitting, so he elaborated, “It might have been if I’d slept last night. Instead there’s just slightly higher levels of _I need to fuck something up_ and given what I’ve been reading all night, I think that’s justified.”

“You know, I’d be a lot more comforted if A. you didn’t think not sleeping was a good solution, B. you had normal levels of _I need to fuck something up_ at any time, and C. you didn’t refer to your inclination towards extreme violence on a scale between _calm as fuck_ and _I need to fuck something up_ ,” Bart mused, counting the points on his fingers and looking far too amused for it, and then stepped back to let Tim through the doorway.

“It’s accurate.”

Bart rolled his eyes as they continued down the hall. “Accurate, he says. Let’s scare the others, he says. You know what would be hilarious, he says. But we’re not talking about the misadventures of Red Hood and Impulse, we’re talking about your mental health or lack thereof. Why did you think sleep deprivation was a good idea?”

Tim stopped himself from ducking his head down to avoid Bart’s gaze. Every second he spent not looking through the hundreds of files from the lab was a second where they were potentially at risk. Including Conner. They had no idea what they’d attempted to make Conner into. Or if there would be anything that would make them eager to hunt the kid down again.

If Tim had his way, he would put off sleep for as long as it would keep them safe. Yesterday afternoon had only reaffirmed that Conner was a completely innocent kid in all of this. He’d bloomed from a quiet, kind of shy kid into a loud, holy terror, scrambling over furniture and chasing after the Titans as he screeched with laughter. It had reminded him a bit of Dick, right down to how Conner had passed out as soon as things started to calm down. At least if Dick had been ten years younger than he was now. 

He’d been just like any other kid.

“Ok, let’s try something else. Because you’ve clearly fallen into that not-so-tiny part of your mind where you think being a gloomy, dramatic bastard is perfectly acceptable and it’s my job to remind you that it isn’t. Not by a long shot. Why was the kid in your room instead of, you know, the one we gave? There’s like another dozen bedrooms if he didn’t like that one,” Bart continued on.

Tim shook his head. “The room wasn’t the problem.”

“Ah, nightmares?”

“Worse. Chemically-enhanced nightmares,” he bit back, nothing short of poison.

Bart’s hands shot up in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t shoot me! I’m just the, heh, innocent bystander. And I’m the absolute last person to talk about probable psychological damage but how does he even remember it when he wasn’t conscious?”

“I don’t even like guns,” Tim muttered. He sighed as they turned the corner. If it had been that simple then none of this would be a problem. “There’s no way to tell how much of it Conner was really aware for but that’s not the part I’m worried about. I already told you about how they were trying to teach him things inside the cloning chamber. But they were using a substance I haven’t identified yet to do it. Not to mention, I have my suspicions about what they were trying to teach him in the first place.”

“If you want, I could test it against a few more… futuristic substances I know of. Probably won’t come up with much but there might be a lead or two in there for you.”

This was why him and Bart were still such great friends. 

Bart was a goofball, through and through. But he was also one of the most intelligent people Tim had ever met, with an ability to go with the flow that outmatched everyone else. He just tried to downplay it, come across as nothing more than grinning ball of sunshine. Nobody that looked at him would have thought he was better at keeping an eye on the important things than pretty much anyone. 

Not that Tim was going to admit that anytime soon. An ego was another Bart had.

Tim considered it for a moment though. “Maybe after I’ve done a bit more research. I’d like to get access to Batman’s databases first but even that’s a last resort.”

“You could make a trip to Gotham to see if the Big Bat will help - don’t look at me like that, I’m just making a suggestion! You don’t have to ask him for help. There’s always the option of hacking into his databases. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t be able to do it because I know you and that means I know you have a backdoor already installed for when something comes up.”

“No.”

“This does classify under something coming up, you know.”

There was that look again, all confusion and stubbornness, the belief that Bart’s way was the right way. Pity, mostly. Tim couldn’t even say he was wrong but it turned his stomach into knots. Rather than respond, he turned into the kitchen, unsurprisingly devoid of people.

Not all of them were early risers like Bart. And those that were, specifically Vic, didn’t come out of their rooms until a time somewhat resembling reality. That was why Bart was the Tower alarm clock. If it were left up to him, then they’d never get out of bed. The same could be said for Gar and Kory. Tim was almost surprised all of them weren’t up today though, driven by the excitement of having Conner around.

But there was a large box resting on the counter. Tim ignored it in favour of his caffeine addiction. Turning on the coffee pot and then searching through the cupboard for his favourite mug could have been done in his sleep. Had, probably been done in near unconsciousness a number of times. It gave him a reason to ignore Bart’s gaze as well. The speedster would give up sooner rather than later though. At the end of the day, he wanted what was best for Tim, not what was best for Batman.

Unlike Damian, it seemed.

His fist clenched around the empty mug while hot, brown liquid filled the glass pot at the memory of yesterday morning’s conversation. He should have known better. He did know better. The truth was that he’d allowed himself to be blindsided by the hope that things could change between them. It was stupid. And even stupider was that he couldn’t quite manage to get rid of the feeling.

Bart was still watching him when he eventually turned around, fresh mug of coffee in hand. The pity was still there as well but the rest of it had faded, leaving Tim just enough opportunity to ignore it entirely.

“So, who sent this to us?” he asked.

Bart frowned, finally looking away. “That’s actually why I came to wake you up. This old guy dropped it off about fifteen minutes ago? Knew where the entrance was and everything. He said to tell you it was from A… and that it was just between the two of you?”

Alfred.

He should have known.

Alfred was always aware of what was happening with each of the Robins - both former and current - far more aware than Batman had ever been. But… he must have left the Manor hours ago in order to get here. Tim swallowed back the heavy rise of emotion and set down his coffee to look at the package himself. There was a note taped to the top in Alfred’s precise, flourishing handwriting, nothing more than brief well wishes, but he quickly tucked it away into his pocket anyways.

The contents of the box were really much more interesting anyways. Tim pulled out a glass container filled with what looked to be chocolate chip cookies and quickly opened it up, letting the still-warm chocolate melt on his tongue. There was nothing better than Alfred’s baking. 

And if he missed anything about the Manor, it was those cookies.

The rest of the box was filled with children’s thing. Enough clothes to last Conner years, a few stereotypical children’s toys, such as cars and colouring books, and then a fair amount of things that most people would have never thought to buy. A full set of amateur test tubes, a doll with accurately depicted organs that could be pulled out of the abdomen. Pieces and pieces of sheet music. 

As if that wasn’t enough, there were notes as well. Notes stuck to the side of certain toys. One note was attached to the test tubes, briefly explaining where Tim could order child-friendly amounts of chemicals and that he only included it on the off chance that Conner was anything like the children he’d taken care of in the past. Another note was attached to the sheet music, this one briefly mentioning how Alfred remembered that Tim used to play the violin and that there were a wide variety of instruments tucked away in a storage unit that Conner was welcome to have.

It must have taken hours to put this all together. Tim couldn’t help the smile that passed over his lips, impossibly fond of his former caretaker. If he didn’t know any better, he would have assumed that most of it had been put together already. But the notes all mentioned Conner specifically and doing this on the off chance that one of them had a child would be, well, a lot.

Though that wish had a higher chance of coming true than Alfred’s usual grumbling about Bruce settling down.

“That is a lot of stuff,” Bart pointed out as he peered over Tim’s shoulder. “I mean, I knew the box was heavy and all but why is an old man bringing you a bunch of children’s stuff? I thought we weren’t telling anyone we kidnapped a small child from an illegal cloning facility.”

“A is Bruce Wayne’s butler.”

“You mean…”

“It’s a good idea to assume that not much gets past him. I mean, he spends most of his time making sure Bruce Wayne doesn’t work himself to death,” Tim elaborated, his smile morphing into a wide, double-edged smirk.

Bart snorted. “I almost thought you were being serious there for a moment. You don’t have to live in Gotham to know who Bruce Wayne is. Hell, didn’t you live with him for a couple years? There must have been a different model hanging around for each day of the week.”

“No swearing,” Garfield muttered as he wandered into the kitchen, rubbing at his eyes. He didn’t pay any more attention to them than that as he blearily rummaged through the fridge.

“Something like that, yeah,” Tim agreed. 

Or not at all. 

Bruce had always been very careful about his dates. They went to the penthouse, never the Manor and thus firmly out of Tim’s life.

Batman, not so much.

Not that Bart knew anything about that. Tim enjoyed his own personal amusement, lips curved upwards over the edge of his mug, and watched Bart pick through the box. One day, Bart would find out who Batman was and he’d think back on this moment and dozens like, and then Tim would laugh for hours.

Bart paused after a moment, staring over at Tim with a deceptively innocent look in his eyes. “Right. Well, there might have been another reason for waking you up. Remember the date I went on the other night? There just so happens to be a possibility that they kinda want to go out again this afternoon and-”

“We’re out of food,” Garfield announced loudly, pulling his head out of the fridge. And with it, an empty carton of milk that had been abandoned inside. “We don’t even have any milk left for cereal.”

“There isn’t any cereal left either,” Bart admitted.

* * *

There were a few reasons why Bart was in charge of getting groceries for the Tower. He didn’t mind being around so many people, or the strange looks he’d get when he’d finally head up to the checkout. All he had to do was smile at them, maybe open his mouth, and their suspicions would disappear without a trace. There was just a significantly lower chance of things going to shit if Bart was the one getting groceries.

On the contrary, there was a high chance of things taking a turn for the worse if Tim was the one getting groceries. Sure, he could put up a facade and avert their suspicions with the best of them. It was a necessary skill when faced with high society Gotham, and he’d been exposed to high society Gotham since he was a small child. But it was like people in grocery stores could just tell he didn’t want to be there and their eyes would always fall back towards him after a few minutes. It didn’t do much for his temper.

Once upon a time, Damian had arranged for groceries to be delivered right to the front door of the Tower. That had worked for no longer than three weeks before the delivery person showed up in the middle of a fight on a Tuesday morning. And then a week after that, the front door had actually blown right off while they’d stood less than five feet away.

There was only so much that money could handle.

After that, whoever was the Titan’s glorified babysitter was forced to go out and buy groceries not just for themselves but for the half a dozen to a dozen growing teens they were in charge of. Kids who spent a large portion of their time running around, training, and fighting criminals. Often while using powers that made them consume double or even triple the amount of calories anyone else would need. In other words, Tim was loading enough food into the shopping cart to feed a mid-sized army.

“You know, it really says a lot that you think you need my help to go grocery shopping,” Steph’s amused voiced filtered over his comm. “It also makes for glorious blackmail though. The kid really only makes it better.”

Tim rolled his eyes as he filled a plastic bag with apples, not bothering to count them. There weren’t going to be enough, regardless of how many he bought. “His name is Conner.”

“Uh-huh, and is that his name or is that the name you gave him, ex-boyfriend wonder?”

“He didn’t have a name.”

The awkward silence that followed on her part was telling. If she’d read the few files he’d forwarded to her, she would have known that and she’d beat herself up for not reading them in the meantime. Not that Tim had expected anything else. Being Oracle took up a lot of her time, all of it even. The only reason she’d agreed to do this, other than the blackmail purposes, was because she’d needed a distraction from this one case she’d been working.

Tim turned back towards the cart, making sure to glare at the curious woman eyeing him and Conner as he deposited the apples into it. There was a brief moment of awkwardness as she realized she’d been caught and then she glanced away, quickly moving along to the other side of the produce section. As if the distance would suddenly keep him from noticing her. At least she didn’t have the guts of the father from earlier.

“Who’re you talking to?” Conner asked, staring at him with wide eyes.

Tim already found it adorable.

“Just a friend who enjoys sticking her foot in her mouth.” Tim pushed the buggy down the aisle, stopping in front of the sweeter fruits. For all that they bragged about how much junk food they ate, both Bart and Gar would reach for strawberries or watermelon before anything else.

“A friend who’s back into grocery store surveillance cameras for you,” came the expected mutter.

Tim grimaced and elaborated. “A friend who’s making sure we stay safe. And who I owe a huge favour.”

“You know it, Red.”

Conner nodded his head seriously and stuck his thumb back into his mouth, staring at their surrounding in quiet wonder. When they’d first got here, he’d been reaching for anything and everything he could reach but it hadn’t taken him much to get a bit overwhelmed by it all. There was just too many new things he hadn’t seen before.

Honestly, Tim hadn’t even thought that Conner should be out in public so soon after being taken from the lab. It would have been better if he got used to being alive for a bit longer before introducing him to the more complicated aspects of life, like parking lots and grocery stores. Only Bart had disappeared off on his date before Tim could even ask, Donna and Raven had left the night before to spend the week at Donna’s house, and the others had to spend the day with their tutor who undoubtedly wouldn’t appreciate taking care of a toddler. And the tutor was the Justice League-enforced requirement of letting teenagers into the Titans.

At least they hadn’t reached critical levels yet. Last night had been critical levels. Everything had been fine up until Tim had tried getting Conner into the bath. He’d started screaming and thrashing the moment he saw the tub. It had taken the better part of an hour to get him to calm down again and that obviously hadn’t been the end of it, not given the way Conner had crawled into his bed in the middle of the night, even as he typed away at his computer. 

All in all, the grocery store was a success.

So far.

Tim turned away to look through the watermelons. There were on sale, along with the pineapple. He’d buy the pineapple as well but he was the only one who ever ate it. Then again, Tim glanced back towards Conner, there was always the chance he wasn’t the only one who liked it anymore.

“Hey,” Steph spoke up with just a touch of seriousness to her voice, and Tim knew better to outwardly react to it. “Your seven. Just a concerned mother, I think.”

“Excuse me,” came a voice behind him a half second later.

There was no way Steph had missed her approaching. 

He was going to kill her the first chance he got. Or maybe just get her into a room of ableist assholes and see what she thought of awkward conversations. That was if she didn’t just take them out.

His smile was already in place when he turned to face her. It was the one he used to use when going up against Gotham socialites, all charm and vapidity, even as his hand lingered on the shopping cart. Just in case. “Could I help you with something?”

“Yes, actually. You happen to have something of mine and I want it back,” she informed him, unwavering. But she wasn’t looking at him. “It’s important to me.”

“Shit, Red, I’m-”

Tim tuned Steph out as he scooped Conner out of the front of the shopping cart and flipped it over in a singular motion. Food went flying everywhere but Tim didn’t stick around long enough to see it scatter across the ground. He was already running through the store. Past the dairy, into the meats, scanning for the potential threats running a constant commentary in his ear.

His first priority was Conner. Conner who was currently clutching Tim’s shirt, a wild sort of energy to him as he started to kick, shoes hitting Tim’s stomach in sharp jabs.

Just like last night in the bathtub.

Probably worse.

Shit.

Tim ducked behind one of the low freezers, holding Conner to his chest. There was a civilian to his side, quickly fleeing at the sight of something. Tim couldn’t see it. And there were more important things to worry about. If it became important, Oracle would warn him about it.

“Hey, Conner,” he murmured and Conner refused to respond at first, face hidden into the crook of Tim’s shoulders. When he did finally look up, goaded into it by a low murmur, there were tears dripping from the corners of his eyes without restraint. “We’re kind of between a rock and a hard place here. I need to fight them, so they don’t take you away but in order to do that, I need you to hold on real tight. Think you can manage that?”

Conner stared at him, uncomprehending, and then latched onto the worst part of what Tim had said. “No! I don’t wanna! I want you. Tim.”

“You have me, Conner.” Tim tightened his hold around the kid, feeling his heart ache. “They’re never going to take you anywhere you don’t want to go without going through me first. I promise.”

Conner let out a soft whine and then threw his arms around Tim’s neck, clinging as tightly as he could manage. Which was a lot harder than Tim would have thought. His shirt was quickly growing damp and he ignored it with a deep frown, instead shifting his backpack around to his side. He doubted Conner was going to let go of him any time soon, at any rate. And those bastards were wrong if they thought he hadn’t come prepared.

Most important was the shining red mask sitting on top of the rest of his gear. Metal plates connected around the back of his head as he lifted it up to his face, then around his jaw, ready to absorb the impact of almost anything short of Superman. The tech kicked in a moment later, starting with a running track of his vitals - Bart really hadn’t been joking when he said Tim should eat something earlier. Conner’s vitals joined his own as he glanced down at the boy in his arms and a couple intentional flickers of his eyes ensured they’d stay there.

“Six confirmed hostiles. Another four unconfirmed but I have a feeling it won’t stay that way. Moderately trained. I don’t think they knew they were going up against the Red Hood.” Oracle paused purposely, doing nothing to hide the edge of her humour, “They shouldn’t take you hiding behind the pre-made hamburgers as a sign of how you usually handle these things.”

“How I usually handle these things?” Tim muttered.

“Violently. They should be the ones fleeing, not the civies.”

“You flatter me, O. Someone could almost think you still wanted me in your bed.”

“Violent queer boys aren’t usually my type but I think I might make an exception for you, ex-boyfriend wonder. Now, the closest one is on the other side of that freeze, just to your right. Armed, preference for shotguns. Your favourite.”

At any other time, the Red Hood would have continued the banter but right now, Conner was clinging to him, heart rate spiking. His arms were shaking but he was otherwise still in a way that suggested the first signs of shock. Him and Oracle could hash out their epic friendship another time.

The Red Hood pulled a collapsible bo staff out of his bag and shifted it back into place. The thing with shotguns was that he had to get in close, disarm, debilitate. Simple, normally. Not as simple when he had to take in the risks factors to Conner, a running tally in the back of his mind of what he could and couldn’t do.

None of that made him hesitate beyond a half second’s consideration and he shot forward from the edge of the freezer. The woman didn’t hesitate. Good. It was bad enough they’d attacked him in a grocery store. It would be a shame if they didn’t at least know how to use a gun.

The first shot echoed through the store, followed closely by the loud crack of glass shattering behind them as the bullet hit the freezer. Oracle ran through stats, easy to consume, easy to filter out. And the Red Hood took advantage of that brief kickback, sweeping her feet out from under her and using the momentum of her fall to ram her gun into her face. 

It was almost pathetic how easily she went limp, unconscious.

“Ha, take that, bitch!” Oracle cheered in his ear. “One down, eight to go.”

* * *

“I got pizza,” Tim announced as he walked into the Tower’s living room, eight large pizzas in hand.

Bart looked up from his video game with a suspicious frown. “I thought you were-”

“I was.”

“But-”

Conner took that moment to scramble up onto the couch, a wide grin on his face. He’d recovered by the time they got to the pizza store and worn that same look ever since. “It was cool! There was a lot of food and then this person talked to Tim and she wanted me and then he threw the, uh, the shopping cart.”

Bart’s eyes grew wider as Conner continued his rendition of their trip to the grocery store, occasionally just lapsing into an incoherent babble, and quickly started interrupting with dramatic reactions. And slightly embellished suggestions of what Tim did when Conner couldn’t remember. Judging by Conner’s enthusiasm, they would almost certainly make their way into later versions of the story. Not that Tim was about to discourage rumours of him sending someone through three aisles of shelving.

* * *

Tim stared up at his bedroom ceiling. There was about as much hope of him falling asleep as a snowball had in hell. His mind was moving too quickly, speeding through answers to questions he hadn’t even considered yet. It had been since earlier at the grocery store, since the phone call with Damian, since Vic nervously told him there was a problem.

This was the part where he was supposed to sleep. He knew that. Things didn’t end well when he went more than seventy-two hours without it, first with him passing out on the nearest flat surface. The next part was the bad part. Anywhere from a couple days to a week of losing himself to the rage from the Pit. And he’d already been worried about it last night, was the reason why he’d been avoiding trying to sleep.

With the way things had been going, Tim was halfway convinced he would be trapped like that for the next month. He could already feel it creeping in, urging him to give up control before he did anything worse. Insisting that he take Conner as far away as possible, that he hunt down everyone who had done the kid harm.

Sleeping now would only give it a chance to creep the rest of the way in.

Not that Bart had understood that. Had threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t try to sleep. Had insisted that he was just holding off the inevitable and that it was okay if Tim had to take off for a day or two if it came down to it. He’d take care of the kids, Conner included. Maybe if that was the problem, Tim would be sleeping right now.

A wordless scream echoed through the Tower.

Tim was already out of bed before he could process it. Across the hall and to the left. Conner. He’d been half-expecting it to be one of the others - Garfield, most likely. It had been a week and a half since his last nightmare and they hadn’t been slowing down these last few months.

No, this should have been expected. For all that he’d been excited about it, Conner had never been involved in any sort of fight before today.

There was another shout and his speculations came to an abrupt stop as he hurried across the hall. Conner’s door was already open, Bart sitting on his bed. Conner was still asleep but Bart kept reaching for his shoulders to shake him rather than just pulling him in close. Of course he didn’t know how to deal with it. The Titans preferred to keep their nightmares private most of the time and from what he’d heard about the future Bart came from, nobody was about to comfort him there. Not to mention that the Flash hadn’t picked up a new sidekick until a couple months ago.

“Bart,” Tim murmured as he sat on the other side of the bed. 

Bart shook his head automatically, eyes trained on Conner. “I got this, Red. You go back to sleep like a good little Titan wrangler and I’ll wake the kid up before he does some real harm to himself.”

“ _Bart_.”

“I-” Conner thrashed again, nailling Bart in the eye with a poorly formed fist.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t sleeping anyways.” Tim ignored the accusative glare sent in his direction, pushing forwards. “What we’re going to need though is a cup of cocoa before all of us go to bed and you’re the best at making it.”

Bart looked like he wanted to protest, maybe insist that he could handle all of it himself but then Conner made a depressing little whimper and Bart was gone, a faint breeze marking his departure.

That was all Tim needed to pull Conner into a hug, barely giving the toddler enough room to move. A fist hit his jaw, almost hard enough to bruise, but he didn’t waver, his thumb moving in slow circles on Conner’s shoulder. Tim murmured a steady stream of reassurances as Conner slowly calmed down. His thrashing slowed and Tim’s jaw stopped catching fists. 

These moments were the most important. That was what Tim could remember from his own nightmares before the Pit, before everything fell apart. Because any minute now, Conner would wake up from the nightmare that had a hold on his mind and he wouldn’t be able to doubt that it wasn’t real. That he was cared for. Hell, Tim was going to go out of his way to let Conner know that at every chance he got.

Finally, the fight drained out of Conner entirely and bleary blue eyes looked up at him.

“Hey,” Tim murmured.

Conner grumbled and those blue eyes disappeared again as he melted into the hug. His hands grabbed at the threadbare t-shirt Tim was wearing, vaguely reminding him that he wasn’t wearing anything more than that t-shirt and boxers. It had been the last thing on his mind.

“Are you okay?”

There wasn’t much of a response, not outside of Conner’s grip tightening on his shirt.

His lips twisted into something vaguely resembling a smile. “Do you remember what I told you yesterday?” he asked, after a moment, and then when Conner didn’t respond, elaborated, “When we were at the store, I told you nobody was going to take you away from me.” Conner paused and then nodded into Tim’s shoulder. “That’s still true, okay? That’s always going to be true.”

They stayed like that for a while longer before Tim slowly pulled himself away to get a better at Conner. The kid looked exhausted, almost as bad as Tim probably looked, which was saying a lot. 

“Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?” Tim offered softly.

Conner nodded quickly, his fists easing ever so slightly.

That much he’d expected, at least. “First though, Bart is making cocoa for all of us. How about we grab before we try and sleep?”

“Cocoa?” Conner murmured, glancing up at Tim.

“Cocoa. You’ll like it.”

Conner didn’t say much more, just moved his arms around Tim’s neck in silent agreement. That was more than fine with Tim. It was honestly better to carry him to the kitchen than have him go back to bed without something warm and sweet to take away the memories of his nightmares, whatever they’d been. It was the one thing Alfred used to insist on.

When they got to the kitchen, Kory was floating a couple feet off the ground, eyes only half open and a warm mug nestled in her hands. Her gaze zeroed in on Conner once she spotted them though and she gave him a small smile. “I hope you successfully vanquished the enemies in your night terrors,” she offered genuinely.

“You too, Kory,” Conner murmured back, briefly glancing up to look at her.

“I did, thank you.”

At least that comment seemed to go right over Conner’s head. But… Kory was usually extremely closed off when it came to the things she’d gone through before she came to Earth. He’d been meaning to talk to her a couple weeks ago, see how she was doing with things. Maybe these next few days would be a good time to actually do that now.

She caught his eye and frowned as if she could tell what he was thinking. Tim knew that look, even if he didn’t often see it from her. He’d received it from Damian a fair amount of times when he first moved to the Manor. ‘Don’t pity me and I won’t pity you,’ it seemed to say. Tim inclined his head in agreement. 

There were two mugs of cocoa already waiting for them on the kitchen counter, still hot, and Bart stood in front of the stove, another batch of cocoa on the element. Familiar lines of tension ran through Bart’s back. Tim frowned. It seemed like everyone was stuck in their past tonight because Bart only got like this when he was thinking about the future. Their future, his future, the one that had been left behind. There was nothing Tim could do to stop it. He’d already tried to come up with the right words and failed.

“Why didn’t you just make it all at once?” Tim murmured instead, leaning against the counter.

“This,” Bart motioned to the pot in front of him with a dramatic wave of his hand, “is a special adults-only batch. The other one was for kids who need cheering up, including a Miss Troy who’s currently hiding in the living room and pretending we don’t know she’s there.”

“Donna?”

“She showed up, she gets cocoa. That’s how this works, right?”

Tim sighed and set Conner down on the ground despite the vague noises of discontent, grabbing the two mugs. “Yeah, that’s how this works.”

Like Bart had said, Donna was curled up on the living room couch and Tim was suddenly reminded that she was hardly even fourteen. The couch almost seemed to swallow her up. She’d turned the television on, setting the otherwise dark room awash in colour, but the volume was off as she started at the voiceless characters. Tim silently sat down beside her, easily passing over one of the mugs.

Conner didn’t hesitate in pulling himself right up between them. There was a tired crinkle to the corners of his eyes, yet it was a far cry from the exhaustion Tim had seen in him earlier. All for the better. Conner settled in and Tim handed over the other mug to him with a soft warning about the heat. Not that it did anything to stop him from immediately taking a sip, quickly pulling away when the liquid burned the tip of his tongue.

“Blow on it a bit,” Tim suggested.

That was how Bart found them. Both Conner and Donna were gently blowing at their cocoa, the corners of Donna’s lips pulled up into an almost smile. Neither could resist a giggle when Tim took a sip from the mug Bart handed him and immediately pulled away when it scalded his tongue, his nose crinkled with displeasure.

Something eased out of the room then, just as unidentifiable as it had been when they’d arrived. The tension itself was still there, just as Donna was still sitting on the other side of Conner instead of being at home with her adoptive mother.

“We got into a fight,” Donna admitted softly. 

Tim nodded. That didn’t exactly come as a surprise to him.

“With who?” Bart asked carefully.

“My mother. Then Raven. It wasn’t pretty and I just - I needed to…” She cut herself off with a shake of her head and gave them a self-depreciative smile.

“You needed to get out,” Bart finished with a firm nod. “Because you didn’t trust yourself not to say the wrong things, things you can’t take back and so you came here. For what my opinion’s worth, I think you made the right choice.”

“We all do,” Tim added softly.

Donna ducked her head down, hiding her smile into her cocoa. “Thanks, you guys.”


End file.
